More from Bangkok 8 and carbon dating the Voynich Manuscript

Bangkok 8 mentions the Hilton having a spirit house surrounded by phalluses because it it for males. Or something like that. I can't find any images of a spirit house garden for the Bangkok Hilton (the real one, not the prison) but Thai spirit houses are everywhere on the nets. And quite pretty.

This website has a selection of the various types. They are built to appease spirits and nearly every Thai home and business has them displayed in some prominent spot. They are typically birdhouse-sized although some seem to be doll house sized.  The pointed structures at the corners of the roof are intended to deflect evil spirits why they fall (why wouldn't they detract good spirits too? It's a mystery.) Here's some more about Thai spirit houses here. Interestingly, supposedly they are rarely occupied by birds despite their convenient size. They are also used in Burma, Cambodia and Laos.

I listened to this week's Skeptoid podcast this week about the Voynich Manuscript. I'd never heard of it but it's a famous medieval manuscript written in an as yet undecipherable language (it does appear to cryptologists to look like a language instead of gibberish.) What I thought was interesting was not the secret mojo that it no doubt contains if only we could just crack the code (I'll leave that to Dan Brown) but the discussion on carbon dating. They are able to date the paper but not the ink because ink isn't necessarily of organic origin. I had never thought about that before but it makes sense. They do not as yet have a reliable way to date the ink in any case and still rule out contamination from the paper materials. They can make a reasonable guess as to the age of the document however based on the paper as there is no trace residue of anything that would have cleaned previous writings off of the parchment. As paper used to be a high-priced item, this was a common practice.

It's quite pretty and has some...odd drawings in it. Here is a site with more information and images. Yale Library is its current custodian.